The impact of climate-smart agriculture practices on household vulnerability to climate change : evidence from Zimbabwe

Abstract

Climate change and variability pose a significant hindrance to agricultural productivity. The adverse effects are particularly concerning in many African countries that rely heavily on rainfed subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods. The promotion of climate-smart agriculture technologies as a pathway to enhancing food security, farmers' welfare, and providing climate adaptation and mitigation benefits is one of the several interventions aimed at improving agricultural productivity. However, there has been a dearth of evidence on the determinants of adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices as well as the impact of climate-smart agriculture practices on food security and household welfare. This paper contributes to this knowledge gap by using the probit model to explore the drivers of uptake of climate-smart agriculture practices, and the inverse probability weighting regression model and the instrumental variable approach to assess the impact on food security, household savings and household vulnerability. We find that the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices among smallholder farmers is influenced by land ownership, climatic variables, land terrain and household sociodemographic characteristics. The study further revealed that adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices leads to a reduction in household savings and household vulnerability but leads to improved food security. Policy implications are also discussed.